1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to an application of semiconductor light-emitting elements. In particular, the present invention relates to a frightening apparatus against animals, to prevent damage by animals while maintaining the coexistence and symbiosis of human beings with animals such as mammals or birds.
2. Background Art
“A bird strike” is a term indicating the collision of a bird against to an aircraft. There are about 1000 incidents or bird strikes reported in this country each year. It is said that there is about 500 million yen in damage caused to airlines every year, by engines sucking in a bird and then breaking down etc. The collision of birds with aircraft, or their getting caught up in the engine obviously causes damage to the aircraft, but also, according to foreign reports, can be a cause of aircraft crashes. For example, in the U.S. air force base in U.S. Alaska, in 1995, the group of wild geese collided with a transportation aircraft just after take off, two engines broke, and 24 crew were killed in the accident that followed.
Thus, since most incidents have occurred in the vicinity of airports, such as on take-off runways, it was thought that scarecrow measure against birds (especially eagles etc. with slow movements) which fly near runways, are important against bird strikes, and many trials have been performed. Earlier scarecrow measure against bird strikes involved painting an eyeball mark on the central part of the engine of a passenger plane. This eyeball mark looks like an eyeball, which turns round and round when the engine is operating, and it was anticipated that birds would not approach it.
In addition, on farms, groups of sparrows pick ears of rice in rice fields, and pigeons etc. pick seed scattered in fields, causing serious damage to the crop. In addition, in cities or suburbs, pigeons, shrikes, crows, etc. live in groups, and their excrement adheres to the roof of houses, the veranda of houses, or to washing, and trouble is caused to the comfort of everyday life. Various frightening apparatuses have been proposed against such damage by birds and the excrement of birds. For example, such things as objects with the above-mentioned eyeball pattern attached have been made to hang from a balloon, things have been made to generate explosions, things have been made to generate light, things have been made to generate light and a tone birds dislike, etc. have been attempted.
Furthermore, in order to prevent the entry of stray cats into property, an experiment of arranging water-filled polyethyleneterephthalate (PET) bottles has also been carried out, but the results are regarded as questionable.
Since a semiconductor light-emitting element such as a light emitting diode (LED) converts electric energy directly into light energy, compared with the incandescence lamp such as a halogen lamp, or a fluorescent lamp, the semiconductor light-emitting element has high conversion efficiency and characteristics being that the emission of light is not accompanied with the generation of heat. In an incandescent lamp, because the electric energy is once converted into heat energy, and the light radiation due to the generation of heat is used, the conversion efficiency of an incandescent lamp in light is theoretically low, and the conversion efficiency cannot exceed 1%. Similarly, because electric energy is converted once into electric discharge energy in a fluorescent lamp, the conversion efficiency of the fluorescent lamp is low. On the other hand, in the LED, it is possible to achieve a conversion efficiency of more than 20%, which is about 100 times higher than that of an incandescent lamp or a fluorescent lamp. Furthermore, the semiconductor light-emitting element such as the LED can be considered as having an almost semi permanent life, and there is no problem of flickering such as with the light from the fluorescent lamp.